Nikhil Koratkar

NANOSTRUCTURED MATERIALS & DEVICES

Nikhil Koratkar joined the faculty of the Mechanical Engineering Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in January 2001 as an Assistant Professor. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2006 and to Full Professor in 2009. In 2011, Koratkar was also appointed a Full Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Rensselaer. In 2012, Koratkar was appointed the John A. Clark and Edward T. Crossan Chair Professor in Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Professor Koratkar is a winner of the NSF CAREER Award (2003), AHS Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Award (2004), RPI Early Career Award (2005) and the Electrochemical Society's SES Young investigator Award (2009). He has published a book on graphene in composite materials and over 125 journal papers. His publications include one in Nature, two in Nature Materials, two in Nature Communications, four in Nano Letters, five in Advanced materials, seven in ACS Nano and seven in Small. Koratkar's papers have been cited over 4800 times (H-index of 38). He has obtained ~$8 Million in research grants from several agencies including NSF, NYSERDA, ONR, ARO, AEC and Industry. In September 2010, Koratkar was appointed Editor of CARBON (Elsevier).

Koratkar's group synthesizes a variety of nanoscale structures (graphene, graphene oxide, carbon nanotubes, transition metal dichalcogenides, metal and silicon nanowires etc.) using techniques such as chemical vapor deposition and oblique angle deposition. In recent years Koratkar's research has focused on the study of these nanomaterials for energy and sustainability. The nexus between energy, sustainability and nanotechnology is an area that shows potential for great scientific and technological advances.